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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Cobra Review

I’m headed to Indiana for a week, but before I left you guys hanging, I wanted to update the site with a new review. This one will either be loved or hated…or both.

Everyone that watches a Stallone flick automatically assumes it’s an action film. 90% of the time it’s true, he’s quite the hero when he’s blowing things up. But what about his exploitation/slasher film? What? You never saw it? You mean you never saw the 1968 film called Cobra?! I know, many people think that this film is a straight up action film, but if you look closely, you see that this film is a slasher flick, that just happens to be a Stallone piece. Take the marketing campaign off the hands of Stallone and his badass cop attitude, and you get a slasher worth writing about.

Marion Cobretti is a rogue cop who is an amazing super cop nicknamed Cobra. He goes in when no one else will. The opening scenes of this film are quite harsh, with full shotgun blasts to people running in a grocery store. If that wasn’t hard enough, the rest of the film deals with a guy named the Night Slasher, who has one of the best looking blades in slasher movie history. He goes through the film killing off people left and right, and it’s pretty cool and gorey. If there was no Stallone mumbling around, this film would be titled the Night Slasher and would be far more awesome, but alas, it has its moments of stupidity.

Cobra takes on a whole motorcycle gang at one point, alone. The final boss battle though, now that’s something straight out of horror cliché. The two battle it out until someone is impaled by a large hook and thrown into an incinerator! Badass!

1986 was a good year for horror, but this film was marketed as an action film. I don’t blame the film studios; I would have done the same. Stallone was a hot commodity, and while he mumbles his way through a lot of these scenes, the slasher parts are a mix of Bava and Argento, something that really makes this film more than just a stupid actioner; it’s actually quite harder. If I were to classify this film, I’d say it’s an exploitation film, because it has every piece of what you would expect from a throwback piece where revenge is the name of the game and a slasher on the loose is getting away with….well….murder. Cobra will either have eyes rolling, or applause. I saw it again today, and boy, it’s harder than I remember. I suggest you check it out…trust me.